Call for Papers: Digital History in Finland, Wednesday, 9.12.2015

Call for Papers: Digital History in Finland, Wednesday, 9.12.2015

The Digital History in Finland Network (#DigiHistFi) will organise a one-day symposium on Digital History in Finland at the University of Helsinki on Wednesday 9th of December 2015. The motto of the network and symposium is: History first, digital second.

Digital History is an area within the emerging field of Digital Humanities that is combining humanities and social sciences with contemporary information and communication technologies. Digital history aims to further historical practice by applying computational methods to various types of historical source materials and data. While there is a tradition, for example, among corpus linguists to use computational methods, the study of history has been slower to take up new approaches in a productive manner. In Finland, the computational approach to history has so far rarely impacted on the core of the historian’s craft in such a way that those who have not already any previous interests in digital humanities would pay attention. Yet, the potential for revisiting old and creating new research questions through computational methods is considerable. This is what the network and symposium seeks to explore further.

The idea of this symposium is to bring together historians working on different aspects of digital history in Finland to talk about their research and meet other scholars interested in similar questions.

We invite submissions of short papers of 15-20 minutes (abstracts of 100 words) on any aspect of digital history. We especially encourage submissions of project ideas and sketches of emerging work. In the morning session it is also possible to present papers through skype. So, it is strongly encouraged that historians from all Finnish organisations participate.

The deadline for submitting a paper is Friday 30.10.2015. Please send the title of the presentation and 100 word abstract to: digihistfi@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance and symposium practicalities of the symposium will be communicated by 13.11.2015.